


keep face

by besselfcn



Series: wild heart [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), First Kiss, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, John Marston Can't Swim, M/M, No Spoilers, POV Second Person, Past Child Abuse, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16665358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: You got this fear in your gut somewhere that if you look too close at him like this--when you’re bathing, when you’re changing in the middle of camp, while he’s sleeping and you’re not yet--somethin terrible’s gonna happen, even if you don’t know what. Like he’s gonna see too much of you right back.





	keep face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cptsdstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdstars/gifts).



> Arthur & John are the same age in this fic, both picked up by the gang around the same time when they were roughly 14. 
> 
> Also, [this post](https://adanceofdragons.tumblr.com/post/179832128635/you-ever-swim-just-to-flex-on-john-marston).

Here is what you remember about that day: that you are both just about sixteen years old, hardly even grown up to full height, and you’re both good enough at holding a weapon and he’s better than good enough, really, but you both got so god damn dirty during the last run in with some other group of boys that Dutch sends you and Arthur down to the river just yourselves so you don’t stink up the whole camp, and you sit down on the shore and take your shirt off and wash your face like a sensible man and Arthur Morgan wades naked and chest-high into the bone-chewing cold.

“You don’t like to swim?” he calls out, and from way up on the rocky bank you tuck your knees tighter and shake your head and yell back at him, “Don’t know how.”

Arthur stops. Holds his soap up high so it don’t get eaten away by the current. He turns and fixes you with a look like maybe he doesn’t believe you and he repeats, “Don’t know _how_?”

“Don’t know how,” you say again, all annoyed this time. “Fuck am I ever gonna learn to swim?”

“I learned,” he shrugs.

You scowl at him and don’t say nothing more.

What you do is what you’ve been doing for a couple months now, except exactly when it started you don’t know but what it is is this: not looking at him. You got this fear in your gut somewhere that if you look too close at him like this--when you’re bathing, when you’re changing in the middle of camp, while he’s sleeping and you’re not yet--somethin terrible’s gonna happen, even if you don’t know what. Like he’s gonna see too much of you right back.

“That job didn’t go too good,” Arthur says. You’re already digging the blood out from under your fingernails with your knife point when he says it, dipping your hands into the water til they nearly go numb.

“There’s other jobs, I guess,” you say. What you don’t say is: I have twelve dollars in my pocket, that’s more than I ever dreamed to have, and I know it’s more than you dreamed too, so what the hell do you want out of a good job?

Arthur grunts. You hear the steady splashing of water, and for a moment your eyes stop listening to you and you glance right up at him and where he’s bent over washing his hair, only thing left sticking out of the water these ropey shoulders of his, all wide but still thinned out, covered in little knife-nicks cause Arthur gets right up there and fights like he’s got nothing to lose.

He comes back up for air and shakes his head so the drops fly all around and you snap your eyes back down to where they belong, right in the water in front of you where you pick up a rock and smooth it over in your fist.

“You thinkin about something, Marston?” he asks you, and you wonder what part of you gave that way or if it’s just the all of you.

“Cold,” you say. “Should get back to camp soon, before all the stew’s gone.”

He doesn’t say anything, and you wonder if he’s waiting for you to look at him--he likes it when people look at him, and they do it often--and so you lean back on your hands and stare him right in the face. He looks contemplative, as Dutch says.

“Soon,” Arthur says, and he disappears below the water.

You scramble to your feet and take a step forward--he went down so fast he looks like he slipped, and the current’s ripping through, and he shouldn’t’ve done that, not on purpose--but then he pops right back up, spits out a whole mouthful of river water and laughs and says, “You oughta learn.”

“Fuck you, Morgan,” you yell, and you throw that rock you had but it goes sailing right past his head like you aimed it.

“C’mon,” he says. He’s treading water now, kicking just enough so he stays where he is and staring at you. “It ain’t that hard. I bet even I could teach you.”

Something like an image of that starts to pop up in your mind before you crumble it up. “Whatever,” you shout, which ain’t really a response at all, but it’s all you got.

He laughs. And he swims.

You watch the way he moves through the water. It ain’t graceful, exactly, but it’s _powerful_. It’s harsh. He beats at the current with his fists and his legs, flips this way and that so his body twists out of the water. You can see all the scars that line the back of him when he moves slow--the little rounded bullet holes from jobs gone truly bad and the big burn scar across his back from when that saloon was on fire and the beam fell right on him and the thick belt-buckle marks on his thighs from his daddy who’s not dead yet but you know you’re gonna make him so one day.

“C’mon,” Arthur says, and you realize you were lookin at him and you turn around quick as you can. “Sun’s still up for a while, come learn.”

“It’s almost five,” you protest, and you’re walking back out of the river towards your socks and shoes and all and you can hear him splashing behind you.

“C’mere--” and he grabs you, right by the ankle, and you try to kick him right in his shoulder but you go down, down, into the scrabbling rocks, and it ain’t nothing compared to anything else but it stings right in your palms and you take a swing at him but he flips you right over til your legs hit the cold shock of the river and he’s leaning over you, your bellies all pressed together, and then you don’t know why or how it’s happening but he’s kissing you. You’re kissing him.

It’s. Different. It’s different than the girls you knew when you were little, who put on their mama’s lipstick and perfume and smashed their lips right up on yours. It’s so different you can’t even remember them, right then. All you can remember is how he smokes all the time cause he tastes like it, and there’s this metal taste too that could be blood and the smell, God, the smell of Arthur Morgan chokes you and you want it to.

He pulls away. You gasp out for air or maybe for more. You think, _Dutch is going to kill us_.

“Dutch don’t have to know nothing,” Arthur says, and you’d think you’d said something out loud except you know he can just read you like that, like he reads everyone. “Okay? This is… this is just us. It don’t even have to happen again.”

The thought of that--the rising terror of this is it, of never kissing him, not ever again, makes you wet your lips and clear your throat and say, “What if I wanted it to happen again?”

And Arthur. He hesitates, an unreadable book, and then he cracks this smile all the way across his face and says, “Well, shit, Marston. You’ve got a spine under there after all.”

You shove him off you then, hard as you can. He laughs even as he hits the ground and you’re dusting yourself off, only realizing just now that your jeans are soaked through and you’ll have to ride the whole way back to camp just like that.

You put your socks and shoes on with shaky hands, already shivering for a fire. Your horses, both of them, aren’t too far away--right next to each other, right where you left them.

“But still,” Arthur says, while he’s saddling up his horse. He got his clothes on sometime when you weren’t watching and you suddenly feel like you missed out on something. “Dutch don’t have to know about this, yeah?”

For a brief and blinding moment you allow yourself to think what Dutch might do if he did know. He wouldn’t throw you both out or nothing--he loves you too much, loves Arthur especially--but he’d know it weren’t right, that it would scare others off maybe, that you should try and do your bests to forget about it and settle down with some nice girls, some good girls, maybe even take you down to a house himself and pay for a night to get your minds off each other, and the thought of him asking you to package this up and put it away makes your mouth feel like burnt ash.

“Know about what?” you ask, and you jump on your horse, and you wink at him.

Arthur laughs like church bells. “John Marston,” he says, shaking his head, and those words in that mouth carry you all the way back to camp.


End file.
